Chaplain's Corner

He sat in my office and as we talked about his youth he said to me, “Young people today don’t know what it is like to be poor. I know what it is like to be poor.” The gentleman that I spoke to shared that his family didn’t have electricity until 1978 when they moved a few miles from Steinbach. I know he is telling me the truth. Although I grew up in a home where there was only one income and not a lot of extra money. I don’t really know what it means to be poor. There were a few years when I was a student, working full time and going to seminary full time that I qualified for Food Stamps, a US social program, but I didn’t really know what it meant to be poor. I still had a car, a job, food on the table and could pay my bills, albeit there was no extra money. But this man before me knows what poor is.

I have been involved with this gentleman for about 7 years now and yes, he knows what poverty is. He knows what having no money means. Disabled from the time of his youth, living in a family that brought him into the world in poverty and he still lives in that state. Now a resident of Bethesda Place he has never had it so good. The problem is that living here means he is separated from his only living family member and in all honesty; he would rather be living at home in poverty rather than in Bethesda Place where all his material needs are cared for.

This short exchange in my office brought to the forefront the fact that money can not compensate for love. In his home this gentleman felt appreciated, needed, a valuable member of the family unit. At Bethesda Place he feels alone, alienated from his home and family and he is making the best of it, but living here, although it might be considered far better than the conditions he used to live in, just doesn’t satisfy his soul

One of the basic aspects of the human spirit is the longing to connect, to be loved, appreciated, to have a sense of value. Social programming is able at times to “make things better” physically: better housing, better nutrition, better health care. But social programming can not make a person feel loved and appreciated, valued and special. No program can.

It is no different in the church. Many believe the church is a place to belong, to be loved and appreciated and feel special; a place to find support and make a contribution. For many this indeed is the case. But in every congregation, no matter where it is located or what denomination or faith group it may belong, there are people who are there, but they don’t feel loved, appreciate, special or supported. They feel as if everyone sees them as an anchor, a burden, a pain to be endured. They feel that the others would be happier if they left and so many do just that. They slip quietly away, leaving their pew empty and many times no one even inquires as to where they went. No one calls and says, “I miss you.” No one cares – reinforcing their feelings and alienating them further.

It is reality about the human condition that God cares about. All too often we get the impression that God just cares about religion. We sometimes believe that all God wants is for humans to follow his rules, his ceremonies, his rituals and wonder if God really, deeply cares about us as individuals. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. What God cares about is drawing us back into relationship  – reaching out to us in our alienation, in our sense of not belonging, in our disconnection and connecting with us – really, deeply, honestly connecting with us.

It is the poverty of our souls that is a priority to God; not that he doesn’t care about the well being of our bodies, but if we focus entirely on the well-being of the body, we will never deal with the poverty of our souls. Like the gentleman I spoke of earlier, God knows that if we feel connected, loved, appreciated, special that we will be able to deal with the ebb and flow of material well being. God knows that what we need in the deepest parts of our being is to know that we are deeply connected to others, loved, appreciated and valued. This is how God create us and it is our depravity that causes us to ignore our souls and be so preoccupied with our material well-being.

This can not be “programmed”. This can not be “planned”. This can not be dealt with by a government agency or a church body. This is something that every many and woman, young or old, needs to deal with directly with God. But so often, people don’t know this or they don’t know how to encounter God in a personal way yet there is this “spiritual” part of this that will not be quieted.

One of the things I do in my work is I express a polite indifference for the religious affiliations of patients, their families and the others I care for. Not that I don’t ask about a patients religious affiliation, I am interested in so far as it helps me get a sense in regards to  a reasonable starting place for spiritual conversation, but the focus of my work is to support a person’s spirit as they face the struggles of illness, accident, and the losses that often accompany these things.

Too often our religious backgrounds have failed to help us understand who we are as spiritual beings. When this is true, we may devoutly follow the guidance of our religious convictions and still have a nagging sense that something is wrong. This sense of “something being wrong” results in people making a variety of choices. Some change churches, hoping that this “something” will be addressed in a new church. Others ratcheted up their commitment to their faith, hoping that this “something” is related to their being committed to the faith at a level that needed to be raised. Still others become disillusioned and leave the chur4ch altogether thinking that something within the Faith itself is betraying them and leaving them feeling this nagging “something” in their soul. Sometimes this leaving is followed by pursuing devotion to another faith tradition completely, sometimes it results in forsaking religious pursuits altogether.

One of the things that I have learned along my spiritual journey is that I must not expect my church or the religious tradition I am committed to, to meet my deepest spiritual needs. I know that sounds “wrong”, but let me explain. Going through the motions of religious observance does not have the capacity to meet my deepest spiritual needs. Believing devoutly the teachings of my Faith doesn’t have the capacity to meet my deepest spiritual needs. Our deepest spiritual needs can only be met in relationship and frankly, most of the relationships I have experienced in my lifetime of being in the church are too superficial to meet those deep needs.

Even the way a relationship with God has been taught is all too often too superficial to meet my deep spiritual needs. I have learned that until I invite God into the deepest and darkest corner of my soul that I will feel this “something” that keeps me searching. God doesn’t want a superficial relationship with us. He wants us to trust him with everything, every dark corner, the deepest parts of our soul. He wants us to trust him in those places we feel absolutely bankrupt, those place we are afraid to explore ourselves, the places that cause us the deepest shame. It is when we invite God into those places and our relationship goes that deep, that the “something” begins to dissipate and we begin to experience wholeness. When was the last time we trusted God so implicitly that we opened our soul, lock, stock and barrel to His presence and love?